Gong Washed

Today was my first gong wash or gong bath!  All I knew about gong washes before today was that lots of people said things like "Don't miss it!" "Oh, if you have a chance to go to a gong wash, GO!" I wasn't sure what it was or what to expect, but my experiences at The Studio Cleveland have been great so far, so I had faith this would be worthwhile.  

The set up was like this:

\We all sat in front of it, some lying, some seated, some on cushions.  I felt like a meditation noob for a moment there.  It's always nice to be humbled by inexperience.  Gives me something to look forward to.  Anyway, the wash began with bowls. And then gong master Steev Inglish slowly built the sounds.

As the hour and fifteen minute meditation progressed, I settled in and moved into a supine position.  You are supposed to lie with the crown of your head toward the gongs and your feet away, which helps the gunk flow out of you as you detox.  I tried not to point my feet at Ben.   Heaven knows no one wants my toxins. Yeesh. 

various mallets and a bow

As for my meditation, well that's kind of personal, even for a blog.  There's been a lot on my mind lately, and much of it I don't even have words for.  I did play with putting myself in the sound and disappearing for a while.  It's what I did when I labored with Jones and it's fun to do that when I'm not trying to escape pitocin-labor pain.  Much more mellow, as you can imagine.  Driftier.

I prayed.  I prayed a chanting and listening kind of plea.  God seemed to answer me back in gong-voice.  But I'm not fluent in gongspeak, so I'll have think more about what those answers and reverberations mean.  Praying seemed to come easier when I was wrapped those sounds and harmonics.  Like they drowned out the chatter that usually distracts me when I pray.  Something felt more pure in those moments.  

And, while this is may not be the right way to do things, I also allowed my mind to see its thoughts.   I just let thoughts drift in, stay as long as they wanted to without me speaking to them (well, this was the goal), and then go.  No conclusions. No realizations or plans.  Just letting them float through and rest for a moment.  It was nice to see where my thoughts wanted to go.  And the gongspeak was funny, too, because when certain thoughts came, CRASH CRASH SSSSSSSHHHHHHHHRRRRIIIIIHHHHH  Other thoughts got a thunderswell, some got space whale sounds, others cacophony.  I honestly can't remember well enough which thoughts got which reactions.  Now that I'm out of the meditation, I'd be inclined to analyze for patterns.  Ruminate.  But it's already fading away.  I think I'm thankful for that.

Oh, and I was able to meditate on the different physical sensations I experienced as a result of sound and vibration.  I am not sure of the extent to which I'm detoxed, but I will say that I physically felt different parts of the meditation in different parts of my body.  Sometimes my teeth, a few times some internal organs in the right side of my abdomen, sometimes in my head.  I was cold, so that was a distraction, but if I had put on my sweater and some socks, I think I would have gotten a lot more out of this aspect of the wash.

After the meditation ended, I did feel different.  I still do.  The pores in my face feel more open.  My mind is quieter.  I don't really want to talk or feel like I need to (both pretty shocking).  I just want quiet and peace.  One's easier to cultivate and control than the other.

And the twilight sky gave us a show on the walk to our car.  I'll definitely do one of these again, but I'll make sure I have some alone time with a journal immediately afterward.  You can come with me if you're okay with post-gong-wash- blissed-out-quiet writing.  Have you ever been to a gong wash or gong bath?  What was yours like?

A crooked I-have-my-hands-fulla-yoga-stuff style cityscape

Ah, my city!  Ah, night!

To My Dirty White Gloves

I like this 500 words a day challenge.  This is day five for me-- I missed a day (thanks, stomach flu), but other than that, I've been writing more in my journal and here.  If I had fewer obligations, I'd be writing even more because it's kicked my writer's brain into gear.  If only I could just stop what I'm doing and write whenever the ideas came.  Some day....

Today, I just wanted to write a regular old post about my gloves, but it came out like this.

To my dirty white gloves:

Ambiguous mittens

Gray and gritty, the grime of ropes and coils

Chipped paint from playground metal

Caught between your fine-knit fibers

Your fingerless hobo state

Derailed if my bluster-hardened fingers can just

Gah just

Hang on

Get a grrrrasp of the

Uuuahhh cold little

White loop of elastic

That,

There,

Frees the mitten top to warm the

dancingest parts of my hands.

Dirt where you’ve made contact

With fences and handles,

Pressed pedestrian signal buttons,

Drummed on metal bleachers,

Scratched a nose,

Brushed hair away from eyes,

Sloshed coffee.

No longer crisp and ladylike,

You’ve taken on the dust-and-wind smell

Of all my coats.

I bought you to transform me into

A creature more ladylike and refined.

Instead, you have become slightly frayed,

Unmistakably soiled,

Broken in,

perfect.

Read a better ode to an inanimate object here.  Because Pablo Neruda is divine.  

Read the last poem I wrote here. 

Other reflections:

On Ellen this week, Jennifer Gardner referred to her post baby body as her "everlasting baby bump" and she called it by her three children's names.  I think that's pretty awesome.  Love me a little celebration of healthy women's bodies and all the changes they go through.  Full disclosure, I read about this on some news website while I was looking for Ebola articles.  I didn't actually watch Ellen.

This morning the wind was coming from the north -- not the first time this school year, but today was the first time the air smelled arctic.  Summer's been lingering in tree smells.  I picture it lurking in the shade of the oak trees in front of Sts. Peter and Paul.  It tucks itself up under the low branches, which are still a good twenty feet off the ground, and it curls up its feet, letting fall blow around beneath it.  I know the summer is waiting there, looking for the right time to leap down on us one last time before it blows away til next year.

So yeah, fall smells have been trading days with the tail of summer.  There have been a few salty, southern smelling mornings, too.  But today was barren, windswept plains and the grey of geese, snow snakes slithering down highways, and tall grasses bent under the weight of hard frost.

Day 3

My 500 are going on paper tonight, friends.  But I'm posting for accountability's sake.  Happy writing!

Teddy Roosevelt, Greatness, Haters, We Got This.

Today's musings were inspired by a story I heard on NPR about why there are so few great presidents.  Interesting stuff, though contestable.  The haters had a field day leaving comments (oh, the internets... I imagine the internets as some version of Hades and all the haters share one body, sort of like a mutant Cerberus, yapping away at all who try to enter).

We are the haters of the internets.

So what does it take to be great?  And more importantly, can’t we all be great?  I think so.  Fo’ sho’!  But how?  If you’re a president, according to Aaron David Miller, you need to face some big ol’ crisis, wade through it in a way that extracts some sort of positive change for the country, and then, after some time goes by, you have to be embraced by your supporters and adversaries alike.  My current history crush, Teddy Roosevelt even lamented not having a crisis “worthy of his mettle” through which he could prove himself. 

Now this I can get behind!  It is so true that slogging through crises are what make us great.  But it’s not just facing hard times that make us great.  We’ll all face hard times.  Some of us have larger giants to slay than others, but they’re all giants.  And some of us have more to slay than others, but fighting any number of giants is damn scary.  The greatness in our own lives comes from learning from those battles.  And it can’t stop there because you can’t learn without making a change.  This is where a lot of us fall short.  I mean, how many times have I faced some problem, often of my own making, only to face the same kind of problem again (also of my own making).  Did I learn something from the battle?  Yes.  Did I learn it hard enough to make some sort of positive change?  Ehhhhhnope.  Or, this is perhaps more common, we learn it enough to make a temporary change, but then we slip right back to the same mistakes again.  Not great.  So all we have to do is stop doing that.  Easy if you open your eyeballs!  While I still dig myself into holes sometimes, I’m getting better at noticing when I’m picking up a shovel so I can put it down.  I’m also getting better at climbing out before they are too deep.  It gets easier, for all of us, once we start paying more attention.

Then there’s that last part, being appreciated for what you've done by supporters and adversaries alike.  At first, this might seem easy to reject.  All you have to do is look at those Cerberus-heads of all the haters to say, “Yeah, well there’s always going to be someone to pull you down and detract from your achievements.”  But if you really live up to your values and your standards, the haters won’t have much to say.  And the supporters will be there, happier than ever to support.

Now this doesn't seem so bad.  Doable, in fact.  Let’s do it, friends.  Let’s go out and be great.  Maybe even the greatest.

Every intention

I am starting a 500 words a day challenge.  Good luck to me.  So far, I began by "writing" but what happened was that I read an article on Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath.  And now I have a hot date with folding laundry and re-watching select episodes of Walking Dead.  Oh, life.

I'm not going to publish this post, though, until I get these words out.  =)

And I'm back, dedicated to you words.

So the last few months of my life have been forcing me to look harder and push through muddy thoughts to articulate my thoughts, my emotions, and my struggles.  It’s been impossibly hard, good, terrible, uplifting, and humbling, like all periods of growth tend to be. While some things are not resolved, I am beginning to get some clarity and one thing I’m more and more clear about is my need for connection.  Lately, the goal has been to not just sit on that clarity and keep it locked away into a journal.  Oh no, friends, you know how much this little Helenka likes to take action.  So I’ve got some friend dates on the calendar and am making the energy and time and effort (ahem, as in bumming a ride off someone) to go hang out with work people on Fridays after quittin’ time. 

I’m still working on backlogged emails and letters.  I’m still in that odd state of avoidance for some things – you know, like when it’s been so long that you don’t want to say something unless it’s good or unless you have the time to be there to respond.  I used to hate that excuse in other people.  I hate it in myself, too.  Doesn’t stop me from using it, I guess.   Ha.

But this has been good for me.   It’s good for me to see how just great the friends in my life are.  And it feels right and comforting to put some more time into them than I have been.  You know, I’m incredibly blessed to have a surplus of good people in my circle.  And there are so many of them I’d like to spend more time with and know better.  There are so many who energize me and make me feel joyfully alive.  And there are so many I want to be there for.  I need to be mindful of engaging with people when I can honor them with time and attention to let a conversation go where it needs to.  It’s hard to do that at work when there are so many bells, interruptions, things to do right at three…. All the more reason to hang out outside of work. 

And all of this extends to my children, too.  This weekend was so nice in terms of connecting with them.  It could be longer, sure.  There are things we never got to do.  But it was good. 

Alright, well, I’m learning about these five hundred words.  I need to be more awake when I sit down to write them!  Goals! Goals! Goals! 

The Lies of Scarcity

When most of us talk about scarcity, we're not being honest.  Or at the very least, we are misnaming things.  Think about your friends, co-workers, yourself.  How often do you hear things like:

--I really want to but I just don't have time for ...

--I can't...

--There isn't enough ....

--I wish I had more...

-- We need....

--Not until...

The list goes on, but you know what I'm talking about.  It all sounds like we're pretty empty and exhausted.  But I don't think we are.  I don't think things are as bad as we make them sound.  So where's the disconnect? 

 My theory is kind of two-fold.  Before we get into that, a few disclaimers: I know that there are exceptions to everything I am going to say.  I also know that sometimes, realistically, the language of scarcity is also the language of truth.  But what's actually true and what we sometimes tell ourselves don't always match.  First, those phrases of scarcity sound an awful lot like excuses.  Most of the time, if you want something, you will make it happen.  You will stop wasting time, start shifting things around, and make it happen.  If you're not, it's probably because you don't really want it.  When we tell ourselves we can't do something because we don't have time/money/energy to do it, we're usually not being totally honest.  The truth is that usually we are choosing to spend that time/money/energy on something else.  We have a remarkable amount of control over those three things and when we're honest with ourselves, what we'll probably see is that it's not that we don't or can't, it's that we are choosing not to.  The truth is that we do have enough of everything, but we are not always comfortable with our choices about how we are spending what we have.  So what's the big deal?  It's that we create a false sense of scarcity when we blame the fact that we aren't prioritizing well on the illusion that we don't have enough.  

Scarcity makes us feel empty and anxious.  "We never have enough."  "We need more."  "If only, if only, if only."  It's a language of barriers, and barriers make us feel trapped.  So if you're feeling empty, you have to ask yourself what's filling your time.  Where are you pouring your energy?  When there's an imbalance, the problem isn't that you don't have enough-- God gave us all that we need-- the problem is that you're spending it wrong or talking about it wrong.  If you're pouring and spending on things that don't replenish you, of course you'll feel a sense of scarcity.  If you tell yourself you don't have enough rather than telling yourself that you have choices, of course you'll feel trapped! 

The answer is to decide how you are going to spend your minutes and dollars and kilowatts of soulfire and then OWN IT.  If you can't own the decisions you're making, maybe that means you're making the wrong ones.   If, instead of owning your decisions, you are saying you don't have enough for what you want, you need to take a critical look at yourself.  Why aren't you being honest with yourself about what you're choosing to do?  And if you don't like what you're choosing, what are you going to do to change your choices?

If you're feeling empty, do something that will fill you up.  Not sure what will fill you up?  I bet if Christ is at the center of it, you'll feel better.  If you can't walk away from something you just spent your time on and say "Yeah!" then it's time to evaluate whether you should choose to sink your time that way again.  A good question I like to post near my desk or work space is: "Is this what you really want to be doing?"  It helps me avoid some of those glazed-eye web-content-binges or foolish e-windows-shopping-sprees.  

I'm tired right now, so I don't think I'm giving these ideas the quality of thought they deserve.  I do have grading to do and one last essay to write.  But those will take longer and be less fulfilling if I work on them in the state that I am in.  I can try them in the  morning when I'm refreshed because I have time, plenty of time, if I don't waste it.  I need to be careful myself and watch how I talk about time and energy.  It's not about how much I have, but how and where I spend it.  Granted there are times where we relinquish some of our control to our children.  No one chooses to lose sleep over crying kids and then be unable to think clearly the next day.... but generally, we are in control.  We are blessed beyond measure to have the time and money and energy that we need.  God has given us the grace for this day and He will fill us with the goodness and love that make all things possible.   All we have to do is choose them.

Beauty Routine

According to one blogger, this should be THE BEGINNING your beauty routine:

I propose an alternative:

1. Cleanser

2. Sunscreen


3. Confidence